George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” This isn’t true of my own household, though. I married an unapologetic Brit, and our common language doesn’t separate us. It just makes things interesting. For instance, around my house, I hear British terms such as “have a go” (“go for it” or “take a turn,” in American English), “your room is a tip!” (“clean up that pigsty!”), “stop pissing and moaning” (“quit your complaining”), “go on!” (“no way!”), “peckish” (“hungry”), “don’t get your knickers in a twist” (“chill”), and, perhaps my all-time favorite, “Bob’s your uncle!” (“And there you have it!”).
If Ben Yagoda is to be believed, it’s not just my family that has absorbed numerous Britishisms in recent years, but American society as a whole. In Gobsmacked!, Yagoda’s entertaining and carefully researched chronicle of the British invasion of American English, the reader is treated to the who, what, when, where, why, and even whilst of this phenomenon. A onetime English professor and the current steward of the immensely popular blog Not One-Off Britishisms (or NOOBs), Yagoda plumbs etymological origins and Google Ngram analysis alike to explain exactly how British English has penetrated the United States after decades of American cultural colonialism in the British Isles.
Stay informed.Stay ahead.
Join Washington Examiner for unlimited access to the news, analysis, and commentary that matter most.
Already a member? Log in
Yagoda attributes the explosion of NOOBs over the last 30 years principally to how “media and technology have dramatically sped up linguistic cross-pollination among national or regional forms of English.” He also contends, reasonably, that Britishisms catch on when they “offer value,” either by “describing a thing for which there’s no precise American equivalent” or by offering a posher (case in point) and, therefore, more appealing version of an existing American phrase.
Take, for instance, “go missing,” a Britishism generally rendered in American English as “disappear.” Yagoda traces its emergence in the U.S. to the early 2000s, around the time that congressional intern Chandra Levy fell off the radar (tragically, she was murdered, her body found in Rock Creek Park). The term “go missing” conveys a certain passive subtlety not entirely present in “disappear,” a sense that a human being simply dissolved into mystery. Other examples include “dodgy,” a British version of the casual American “sketchy” that’s less critical and more playful; “taking the piss,” Leeds’s slightly edgier way of saying “teasing”; and “book,” a sturdier-sounding version of “reserve.”
Then there are the British phrases that simply sound better (more dramatic, elegant, or sophisticated) than their exact American counterparts, such as “full stop” for “period,” “spot on” for “exactly right,” “whinge” for “whine,” or, well, “gobsmacked” for “shocked.” Pronunciations trace a similar trajectory: “eye-ther” and “neye-ther” are horning in on “nee-ther” and “ee-ther,” “sce-nah-rio” may be replacing “sce-nare-io,” and “ahnt” is starting to outpace “ant” (for “aunt”). As Yagoda notes, “Most NOOBs become NOOBs in part because they have no precise American equivalent and therefore provide valuable nuance.” However, with these terms, “Americans presumably use the variant because they want to sound British — or they’ve heard others say it and they like the ring of it.”
